


Sanguine

by emungere



Category: Firefly
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-20
Updated: 2007-11-20
Packaged: 2018-02-26 10:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2648564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emungere/pseuds/emungere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things are harder to leave behind than others. Especially when they follow you halfway across the 'verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanguine

Mal picked up his post on Tap Rat Moon Station, a clutch of space junk held together by a tenuous grav field in orbit around the galaxy's most notable terraforming disaster. It was right out on the Rim, and faces didn't change much from visit to visit, which was why he found himself frowning at the girl handing him his letters.

"Where's Burt?" Mal said.

"Dad's dead." She pressed her lips together briefly, turning them white and bloodless. "Got vented out the moonside airlock a couple months back."

"Real sorry to hear that," Mal said automatically.

The girl--Satchiko, Mal remembered abruptly--cleared her throat. "Captain Reynolds, I heard tell as how you helped those ladies at the Heart of Gold a few years back, and the men who killed my dad, they got something real bad happening on that moon."

"I don't do that sort of thing these days. Anyway, there's nothing on that moon but man-eating plants and rodents of an unusual size, everyone knows that."

"Sir, I swear, I got--" She lowered her voice abruptly. "I got some proof. If you'd just look--"

"Sorry. No can do." Not without a crew, and there was no room for a crew on the ship he ran now. He tried not to look at her face too hard before he turned away, sorting through his post instead.

It was all weeks or months old. Several were from Jayne, as he'd known they would be. Man didn't know when to quit.

They were all short, of course they were, and near to illegible most times, but at one a week, regular, for going on two years, they did stack up. Mal shook his head. Jayne Cobb, war correspondent. Well, he did write to his mama every week, always had, all the time Mal'd known him. Mal wondered sometimes if he wrote to anyone else, or if it were just him and Mrs. Cobb. "Oughta form a club," he mumbled.

These days, the letters were postcards and generally said things like _We are all still alive and blowin shit up._ One of them this time was in an envelope, and when Mal opened it, contained a photo as well as a letter. The letter read, _Simon and Kaylee got hitched, Simon said they did so send you an invite, so don't start bitchin._ The photo showed Simon in a suit and Kaylee in a simple wedding kimono, looking to be in a family way already. They clutched at each other's hands, and they both looked fit to burst with joy. It wasn't a look Mal had ever seen on Simon's face before. Made him look young, even with the few strands of white the war'd put in his hair.

One of the other letters was the invite, with a date two weeks gone. Mal tossed it. He wouldn't have gone anyway. No point now. They'd gone to war, and he hadn't. They'd won, and he'd hadn't. They'd made something new, and he didn't fit in it any better than he'd fit in the Alliance. He shook his head and wondered, again, why they just wouldn't let go. They all had good lives now. Didn't need him looking after them.

There was another envelope from Jayne, with another photo. This one showed the lot of them getting medals from whatever new government they'd patched together. Jayne looked like it was the biggest shock of his life, and Mal had to smile at that. There was no letter, but he'd written on the back of the photo: _Big damn heroes?_

Ain't you just, Mal thought. His throat squeezed tight for a second, but he shook it off. He pocketed the photos. They'd go with the rest, all stuck up on the wall of his bunk. He even had one of Serenity, taken when he'd placed the ad to sell her off. Well, it just wasn't practical to have a ship that large and only him on it, and she'd needed Kaylee looking after her anyway. He had a one man runner now. Smaller jobs, fewer complications.

He thought about that photo as he walked, how he'd stuck it up to the porthole so she hung against the stars, and as he paused by the station's observation window, it took him a good few seconds to realize that the ship out there was really out there and not in his head. He blinked, and rubbed his eyes, and blinked again.

There were other Firefly class ships in use, still. Not many, but a few. She turned as she hitched up with the station's airlock, and Mal saw her name painted on the side. Serenity. He stared, and he didn't know how much time passed before there were footsteps behind him, and a voice.

"Uh. Hey, Mal."

"Jayne," Mal said, without turning. "Hope you ain't planning on me calling you Captain Cobb."

"Huh? Oh. Nah, weren't me that bought her."

"Simon," Mal guessed.

"Him and 'Nara, yeah."

"And they sent you to tell me?"

"Well..." Jayne shuffled forward and leaned his bulk against the bubble of the observation window. "Doc said he'd had all the punching he wanted from you way back. And my skull's thicker anyways."

Mal grunted and tried not to look at Serenity or at Jayne's sergeant's uniform.

"Hey, Mal?"

"What."

Jayne knocked his forehead against the thick glass a couple times and rubbed a hand over his mouth. He was clean shaven now, Mal couldn't stop himself from noticing, hair buzzed close to his head.

"You get all them letters I sent you?"

"Yeah, I got them."

"You read 'em?"

"Yeah, Jayne. I read them."

Jayne nodded, like that settled things. Maybe for him it did. Jayne was simple like that. "Saw your ship," he said. "Little screwed up wad of gou shi."

"Yup."

"Room on that for two?"

"Ain't hardly room on it for one," Mal said.

Jayne grunted and dug in his pocket, pulling out a folded piece of paper. "Doc said to give you this once you stopped yelling."

"Who's yelling? I didn't yell. You tell him I didn't yell." He unfolded the paper. "Arrogant little..." It was a deed for Serenity, made out in the name of Malcolm Reynolds. "Well, hell. This ain't gonna work."

"No?"

"Heroes ain't petty crooks, nor the other way around."

"Who's petty? I ain't petty." Jayne frowned. "Means small, right?"

"More or less." Mal sighed. "What are you doing here, Jayne Cobb? That medal's a gorram meal ticket for the rest of your natural. You know that."

Jayne was quiet a long time, fingers drumming steady and dull on the cold glass.

"I ain't that guy," he said, finally.

The hell of it was, Mal knew just what he meant. He just hadn't ever expected Jayne to get it. But then he hadn't ever rightly expected Jayne to stay on his crew, or have a thought beyond his next pay day, or fight in a war, or get any kind of rank except the kind a good bath washed away. Hadn't expected those letters. Hadn't expected Jayne to roll over and spread his legs for him, though maybe that shouldn't have been such a shock, looking back on it.

"Gotta get my stuff," Mal said, only half meaning what he said. The other half was fixed firmly on getting back to his wad of gou shi and getting the hell away from Tap Rat. "You coming?"

Jayne pushed off the wall and followed him, silent and more than usually hulking. The uniform made a difference, made him stand out, something out of a propaganda poster. Mal hadn't got a uniform in his war. And Jayne was _older_ than him. That was no kind of fair.

"Ruttin' hell," Jayne said, when he stepped into Mal's runner. "Worse inside than out. Where'd you dig up this gou cao de piece of junk?"

"Flies well enough."

"Got a funny smell to her."

"That'd be you, Jayne."

Jayne grunted and leaned against the bed while Mal packed. "You kept all them pictures I sent," Jayne said, nodding to where Mal had them stuck up. He touched the one of Zoe and her baby with one finger.

"Reckon it'd be rude to toss them out."

Jayne snorted. "Yeah, Mal. You got manners."

"More than you."

Jayne grinned and smacked his ass as he went by. "Yeah, I know. Most everything's warm compared to space. We gonna fuck or what? Won't have much chance later today, on account of all the booze we're gonna be drinking."

"Party, huh?"

"Little Kaylee's hanging streamers and such. Never seen the cargo bay so fancied up."

"Warms my cockles, that's a fact."

"You look it."

Jayne grabbed his wrist the next time he passed and yanked him down onto the bed. Jayne plopped down beside him, bed supports creaking. Jayne didn't say anything.

"What do they all think there is to celebrate," Mal said, finally. "Bunch of gorram heroes, couple of little bitty kids, and a relic from the war that didn't work out? I don't see as how that's a recipe for anything but trouble."

Jayne looked at him sideways. "Yeah, ain't none of us used to trouble."

"Oh, shut your mouth."

Jayne kissed him then, hard and rough, and with a faint scrape of teeth on Mal's lip. The feeling of his hand closing around Mal's jaw was so familiar; large, tight, thumb digging into the hinge, tipping his head to the right angle. Jayne was never much for subtlety, in kissing or grenades or dropping his drawers and telling Mal just exactly where he wanted Mal to stick it.

It was the familiar part that did him in, now. Jayne even smelled the same, close up, and it was so gorram weird how it all came back. It was almost like some kind of deja vu, not for something that had never happened, but for something he'd been ten kinds of sure would never happen again.

Jayne's hand pushed under his shirt, and Mal thought: _Well, never been the type to get out when the getting's good. Hang onto a thing till I got no teeth left, more like._

*

On the way back to Serenity, he stopped by Satchiko's post station. Her worried eyes went from him to Jayne and back again.

"Maybe there's something I can do after all," he said. "I'll be by tomorrow, and we can talk."

She smiled so wide it reminded him of Kaylee, and he actually forgot to ask the crucial question until he and Jayne were halfway back to Serenity.

Jayne nudged him heavily, said it out loud just as it formed in Mal's head. "Can she pay?"

Mal laughed until he was wheezing. He would've been all right, but Jayne kept on saying things like, "I ain't fooling, Mal! Can she cough up the cash?" And Mal kept laughing, because it felt good, and because there were some things you could always count on, no matter what.


End file.
